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sOn. Entile G. Ovasefman 

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•UJepartment of ^^gnicultune 
<ytate of y^ lain 




ALABAMA PRINTfNS 00. MONTGCMeilY 



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IN SXCHANaS. 



?kiiaimtng Snuth^rn TOnstc Farm frauds. 



BY DR. EMTLE O. KASERMAN, WINCHESTER, TENN. 



Just as truly as the merchant's stock of goods the farm is 
to be regarded as the farmer's capital, and this capital is 
invested at its best only when every acre of the farm is bring- 
ing the largest and most valuable crop that it is capable of 
producing. Unproductive land, is just as truly '^dead stock" 
as unsaleable merchandise, and a casual glance at our bare 
hills and vacant fields will show what a large area of our 
Southland is ''dead stock," and sadly in need of renovation. 

In the days when our plantations numbered their acres by 
the thousands and laj^ur was. cheap, the planter could afford 
to clear off the forest growth and bring fresh fields into cul- 
tivation whenever his yields of cotton, corn or tobacco fell 
below a profitable figure, and he could ''turn out" his worn 
fields and let nature restore their fertility. But with the 
breaking up of the large estates and the abrupt changes in 
labor conditions this method of farming is no longer profit- 
able, or even possible, for nature's process of rejuvenating 
the soil is much too slow for the planter with only a compar- 
atively small acreage. He cannot afford to wait on Nature 
to restore the fertility of his wasted fields, but must seek 
some method of farming by which the fertility of his fields 
may be maintained and their continued productiveness, 
assured. 

This is the problem that faces the Southern farmer, and it 
is a problem of vast proportions, and any real solution of it 
must take into account not only purely agricultural questions, 
but must deal also with educational and sociological condi- 
tions. I am glad to be able to say that much of the best 
thought and most earnest endeavor of our day is directed 
to the solution of this problem. This is an age of scientific 
research and experiment, and we see on every hand the en- 



deavor to apply the best results of scientific research to daily 
life. Science has now established its reign over the indus- 
trial and commercial worlds, and its literature is rapidly 
being translated into the langu;ige of the common people. 
Our national and state departments of agriculture, our agri- 
cultural colleges, our experiment stations, and various other 
agencies have done much to foster an appreciation of the 
breadth and interest of the science of agriculture when 
studied for its own sake, for tinancial profit, for pleasure, or 
for the benefit of mankind, and the usefulness of each of 
these agencies is becoming greater every day. But in the 
end every ruial home must be its own agricultural depart- 
ment, every farmer must be his own professor of agriculture, 
^nd the farm itself must be his experiment station. 

He who undertakes the task of reclaiming and restoring 
wasted lands must remember that the conditions he has to 
meet will be to a very great extent local conditions. He must 
take into account that no two States, no two counties, no two 
fields, and not even any two acres will require exactly the 
same treatment. There are differences of soil, differences of 
climate, differences in the causes of waste and wear that must 
be taken into account if he wishes to obtain the best results. 
He must know from a study of the soil itself the kind and 
condition of the soil he wishes to improve. 

To the popular mind the renovation and improvement of 
wornout lands carries with it the idea of the expenditure of 
large sums of money, and the bringing about of large imme- 
diate results. This may very well be true in isolated cases 
where a man of means engages in the M^ork for pleasure or 
for the benefit of mankind. But most of us are engaged in 
farming for a very different reason — it is our sole means of 
gaining a living, and of course it rests with the individual 
farmer whether it shall also be a pleasure. I believe that I 
do not misrepresent the condition of the average farmer when 
I say that his case would be well nigh hopeless if the renova- 
tion of the impoverished farm meant the expenditure on it of 
money gained from other sources. Any feasible scheme for 
the renovation and improvement of his wasted lands must 



take into account the very important fact that the farm must 
also furnish a living for the farmer and his family aud his 
stock, while it is being improved, and jierhaps even enable 
him to lay by something for the proverbial ^'rainy day." 
The means for the improvement of the soil must come from 
that soil itself, aud the task is not nearly so hopeless as it 
would seem to appear. While it is beset bj^ many difficul- 
ties, yet these very difficulties may be made to serve as step- 
ping-stones to success by him who will deal honestly with his 
fields, and who will apply the same rational methods that 
every successful business mau employs. 

The Southern farmer has many advantages over his N^orth- 
ern and Western brother, but he has also difficulties and dis- 
couragements that are peculiar to our part of the country, 
far from the least of which is the lingering remnant of the old 
cavalier idea that manual toil is beneath the dignity of the 
gentleman. But I am glad to see that this idea is fast disaj)- 
pearing. Not that the Southern gentleman is losing any of 
his cavalierly qualities — far from it, for his gallantry, chiv- 
alry and hospitality are, and ever will be, household words 
as far as his name is known. And it is a noteworthy fact, 
and one that is full of promise for our country, that we hear 
less and less the complaint in our rural communities that our 
young people look upon the farmer's vocation as dull, labo- 
rious and unprofitable. How many a youth has in the past 
generation left the farm to spend his life in some industrial, 
commercial, or scientific pursuit, only to discover later in life 
that he has isolated himself from the very centre of nature's 
activities and has abandoned a world of opportunities for 
scientific study in order to enter upon a life in many ways 
narrower aud more monotonous than the one he scorned in 
his earlier years. Is not the rural fireside a better environ- 
ment for scientific study than the narrow attic! Is not the 
farm the greatest of all scientific laboratories, where the 
investigator may read at first hand from the pages of the 
book written by the great Master Scientist himself? 

After the farmer has made the acquaintance of his soils 
and has foupd the causes of tbeir unproductiveness, tUen it 



is time for him to consider also the means at his command to 
be employed for their improvement. As already stated above, 
he will have to deal largely with local conditions, and no one 
definite set of rules can be giv en that will meet each individ- 
ual case. There is one rule, however, that with few excep- 
tions may be safely said to apply to each individual case. 
The merchant who succeeds is the man who gives his per- 
sonal care and attention, his best thoughts and energies — a 
real vital part of himself to his business. We are not sur- 
prised at the failure of a professional man who neglects the 
interests of his clients and bestows his thoughts and energies 
elsewhere; shall we then be surprised at the non-success of 
the farmer who leaves his acres in the hands of hirelings to 
take care of themselves as best they may? The result will 
surely be disastrous. It may be laid down as a fixed rule 
that success on the farm means residence on the farm. Study 
your fields until you know their disposition, cheir wants, 
their behavior. Convince them that you have their best 
interests at heart. Make friends of your acres, and they will 
hear your voice, they will recognize your touch, and they will 
respond to your call. Court your farm as you courted Mary 
in the days when you laid siege to her heart and determined 
that you would take nothing but '^yes" for your answer, and 
the favors your farm will bestow on you will not be disap- 
XDoiuting. 

Long-continued and heavy cropping is by no means the 
only cause, and in fact not even generally the principal cause, 
for the impoverished condition of large areas of oar farming- 
lands. Many causes have been instrumental in bringing 
about this ruin. Lack of any rational system of crop rota- 
tion, or even the lack of any effort at rotation, but cotton or 
corn from year to year, shallow and poor ploughing, exposure 
of the unprotected cotton and corn fields to the leaching and 
washing action of torrential winter rains — these are a few of 
the principal causes that have wasted and are still wasting 
our farm lands. 

It is, of course, self-evident that in order to stop a waste 
one must know where to look for it. For example, you might 



plaster the sides of a tank all over without stopping the waste 
if it leaked at the bottom. Too much attenliou, then, cannot 
be given to searching out and locating the causes of waste 
and wear. Strange as it may sound, it is still a fact that the 
average farmer actually wastes a far greater part of the plant 
foods in the soil than he draws from it by his crops. His 
practice is often just as wasteful as if he deliberately cut a 
hole iu his pocket that his nickels and dimes might slip 
through . 

The fertility of the soil depends very largely on the amount 
of humas it contains. The term ''humus" may be defined as 
embracing all that ''large class of compounds derived from 
the decay of former animal and plant life. This organic mat- 
ter undergoes decomposition in the soil, and in the interme- 
diate stages of decomposition and mixed with the soil it is 
known as humus." This humus performs a number of func- 
tions in the soil which are of the highest importance iu crop 
production, for it greatly influences the tempeiature, tilth, 
permeability, absorptive power, weight and color of soils, 
and directly or indirectly controls to a very high degree the 
supply of water, nitrogen, phosphoric acid and potash. 

In view of this, it becomes clearly evident that the wearing- 
out of our soils consists simply and chiefly in the exhaustion 
of its humus by the continuous planting of cultivated crops 
such as cotton and corn. It is not the object of this paper to 
urge that less cotton should be planted, or in any way to dis- 
courage the raising of this staple product. Experience has 
amply proven that the Southern states are by nature in every 
way best fitted for its cultivation, and that nowhere in the 
civilized world are conditions more favorable for its produc- 
tion both iu quantity and quality. Another thing is daily 
becoming more apparent — the fact that the world is looking 
more and more to the Southern states for its supply of cotton, 
and will become more and niore dependent on us ior the ma- 
terials wherewith to clothe itself. These facts are significant 
in that they would seem to argue not a decrease in the acre- 
age of cotton, but an increase in yield and quality. The vital 
question, then, for the Southern farmer to consider is methods 



and means by which his cotton fields which have been robbed 
of their original store of humns may be replenished with this 
m'ost valuable and important element of fertility. 

This naturally leads to the question of fertilization, and by 
this I do not refer to the addition to the soil of chemicals, but 
rather to the restoration of its humus. In this connection 
there occurs to me a little couplet that may be familiar to 
many present — 

"Lime and marl without manure 
Makes both farm and farmer poor." 

And one cannot help wondering of how many farms and farm- 
ers in Alabama this might be true. Now there are at least 
three well-known and successful methods of maintaining the 
humus of the soil. These are: the liberal use of well-pre- 
pared farm manures, green manuriugs, and a judicious rota- 
tion of crops. The most successful farmer, however, does 
not confine himself to any single one of these, but brings 
about the best results by a judicious combining of all three. 
It is a generally conceded fact that stable manure is among 
the most lasting in effect of any of the fertilizers which can 
be applied. This is due to the fact that in addition to its 
direct fertilizing value, it is also valuable in making the inert 
plant food in the soil more available by virtue of the power 
which it possesses of uniting with the soil potash and phos- 
phoric acid to form humates. 

In order to show in a graphic way the necessity of main- 
taining the humus in the soil to be planted in cotton, let me 
give some figures representing the fertilizing constituents 
used to produce a crop; and to avoid the confusion resulting 
from the use of many figures, I will confine myself to nitrogen 
alone. Nitrogen is at the same time the most valuable, the 
most expensive, the most unstable and elusive, and yet the 
most plentiful and most readily obtainable of all the fertiliz- 
ing constituents. The production of every 3U0-i3Ound bale of 
cotton consumes about 46 pounds of nitrogen. About half of 
this is returned to the soil in the leaves, stems, and roots of 
plants left on the fields. An average market price for nitro- 



gen is about 13^ cents per pound. This means that for every 
bale of cotton you produce your field has lost in value in 
nitrogen alone about three dollars. Now take into consider- 
tton the fact that for every pound of nitrogen actually util- 
ized in the production of the crop at least three pounds have 
been wasted, and if the fields are allowed to lie bare and ex- 
posed to the action of heavy winter rains the waste is even 
greater. The same thing is true, though in much less degree, 
of phosphoric acid "and potash. These figures seem alarming, 
but every farmer has, in the unmerchantable residue of his 
crops and in stable manure, such a valuable means of main- 
taining the fertility of his soil, that if these materials are 
carefully and systematically returned to the land it ought 
never to be necessary to purchase potash and phosphoric acid 
in quantities very greatly in excess of the amounts actually 
sold as constituents of the products of his farm. The fertil- 
izer value of food for ordinary farm animals ranges from say 
about $1.00 to $15.00 per ton, and in the case of most of 
them the fertilizer value is nearly or quite equal to the com- 
mercial value. The manure, then, should be considered just 
as much a part of the return from the feeding of farm ani- 
mals as meat, milk, labor, or saleable animals. Indeed, the 
manurial value of horses and cows may be safely stated at 
from $25.00 to $30.00 per year per 1000 pounds of live weight. 
]N"o farmer would think of allowing the unnecessary loss of a 
pound of meat, milk, wool or cotton, or of a day's labor of 
one of his draft animals, and yet many a farmer allows as 
much as one -half of the value of his stable manure to go to 
waste each year. This loss is just as real and just as serious 
as the loss of so many bills from his pocket-book. 

If shallow ploughiug has been the rule it is not generally 
found advisable to plow deep at once, for the turning up of 
much new soil at one time will generally be followed by one 
or more poor crops. Let the plow go a little deeper each 
year until you have reached a depth of from six to eight 
inches, which will generally be found to bring about the best 
results. With us it has been the rule and practice to pay 
very great attention to the proper and thorough pulverizing 



8 

of the soil after it has been ploughed. The object of plough- 
ing may be briefly summarized as follows: To enable the soil 
to absorb the rainfall more quickly than it would iu its undis- 
turbed condition; to maintain more of the rainfall near the 
roots of plants; to admit fresh air to the roots of plants; and 
to enable the roots of young and quickly growing plants to 
penetrate the soil more readily. It will be at once apparent 
that these objects are but half accomplished when the soil is 
merely turned, aud hence the need of subsequent cultivation 
in order to prevent the loss of water by weeds and grass and 
by evaporation. 

When we recall that on an average seventy pounds of 
nitrogen, thirty pounds of phosphoric acid and twenty pounds 
of potash are sold with every ton of produce leaving the 
farm, it will be readily seen that sooner or later some pro- 
vision must be made for returning these plant foods to the 
soil. Potash and phosphoric acid are comparatively cheap 
and readily obtainable iu commercial form as bone-meal and 
superphosphates, but nitrogen is too expensive, and the 
farmer cannot afford to purchase it in its ordinary commer- 
cial forms except under rare conditions in highly specialized 
farming. It is in this connection that I wish to speak briefly 
of a judicious system of crop rotation. There is a class of 
plants known as legumes which have been very aptly called 
''nitrogen traps," for they possess the remarkable quality of 
actually adding to the store of nitrogen in the soil instead of 
drawing on it, and the cowpea is to the South what alfalfa is 
to the West and red clover to the North — a forage plant per- 
fectly adapted to the needs of the region where it grows. 
Someone has very happily called a field of cowpeas the ''poor 
man's bank," but I wish to change the simile just a little, 
for a crop of cowj)eas is rather a check or draft on that bank 
where nature stores her universal surplus of nitrogen, and 
the Great Banker who watches over it all will never dishonor 
your draft on, that bank. Every farmer, be he rich or poor, 
has more than three thousand tons of atmospheric nitrogen, 
free and ready at hand, resting over every acre of his farm. 
A certain quantity of this it is his privilege to draw into the 



9 

soil aad transform into immediately available plant food 
every time he gro%v8 a crop of cowpeas. 

We speak of bringing our lands back to their virgin condi- 
tion; it is our privilege to improve them vastly beyond their 
virgin condition. There are lands in some countries of Europe 
that have in many cases been under cultivation tor hundreds 
of years, and these same lands are now far more productive 
than they were in their virgin state. There is no reason why 
the same may not be true of our country. In fact, there are 
in our midst some farmers who have applied to their fields 
the rational system of farming suggested in these pages, and 
right nobly have those fields responded, for where once only 
three bushels of wheat grew per acre thirty-seven have since 
been harvested. The Western farmer on his virgin soil is 
satisfied with twenty to twenty-five. 

The solution of the problem of the renovation and rejuven- 
ation of our worn-out and wasted farm lands would seem to 
lie along the lines here suggested, and may be briefly sum- 
marized as follows : Let the farmer eat, drink and sleep on 
his farm, and cultivate a close personal acqnaiutauce with 
each individual field and acre of his lauds. Let him pay 
careful attention to thorough ploughing and good cultivation, 
that the mechanical condition of his soil may be always at its 
best. Up in our section we have a saying that it pays to 
"plow our corn before we plant it," and paradoxical as the 
statement may seem it is still literally true in showing the 
great emphasis we'put on the matter of soil preparation before 
the crop is planted. Then let the farmer adopt a rational 
system of crop rotation. With every bushel of cotton seed 
that you sell from your farm you sell about fifteen cents worth 
of nitrogen alone, besides the immense waste that goes on 
during the winter when your fields lie bare and exposed to 
the leaching and washing action of the heavy winter rains. 
Would not fairness to your fields seem to argue that at least 
every third year you should plant cowpeas in order to restore 
this nitrogen! And this argument gains yet greater force in 
view of the fact that your crop of peas will be practically 
fully as valuable from a money point of view as the cotton 



10 

crop which you could have grown on the same soil, and it 
will cost much less in labor. And the waste of this valuable 
plant food element which goes on during the winter could 
not only be counteracted and stopped, but fresh supplies of 
nitrogen could be supplied to your soil while it is lying idle 
in the winterby the employment of crimson clover as a catch- 
crop for the protection of your fields from the winter rains; 
and the turning under of the young green clover in the 
spring when you prepare your fields for cotton would also 
greatly improve the mechanical condition of your soil. I 
have just urged the free planting of cowpeas, and a little 
earlier in this paper I discussed the great value of stable 
manure. The problem may have suggested itself to your 
minds how best to utilize your crop of peas so as to derive 
the greatest returns from it. Don't you see the obvious solu- 
tion! It is, in a single word, — cows. By feeding his peas on 
the farm the farmer gets their full commercial value in butter, 
milk, cheese, or beef, and at the same time he will retain on 
his farm the full fertilizer value of the crop, which is almost 
or entirely as great as the commercial value. Cotton, peas, 
clover, in rotation with grain crops, with the methods of cul- 
tivation and fertilization above suggested, will not exhaust 
and wear out his lands, but will enable the Southern farmer 
to make a good living, to lay by something against the day 
when he can no longer work, and at the same time he will be 
restoring his soil, not only to its virgin condition, but to its 
ideal condition of fruitfulness. 

This world is God's world, and God's world is one world, 
and the laws which govern the field and the production of 
its crop of weeds or fruit are just as much His laws as the 
laws which obtain in the moral universe. Is, then, he who 
knowingly or ignorantly transgresses the laws of the field any 
the less a sinner than he who transgresses the moral law? 
Let us, then, seek out and render grateful obedience to these 
beneficent laws which God has written out for us with His 
own hand in such beautiful characters and attractive colors 
in the great book of N'ature. As Leibnitz once exclaimed in 



11 



joy over his studies, let us too ^'think the thoughts of God 
after him." A glorious future lies before our fair beloved 
Southland, and God will help us do our part to hasten the 
day when our milk shall lave a thirsting world, when our 
meat shall feed its hungering thousands, and our silken fibre 
clothe its naked millions. 





xT^. 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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